Why do you attempt to make SQL Server a perl interpreter or a Unix utility?

I just cannot see any benefits this pattern matching brings when all the utilities prvovided in the products above (AWK, ED, SED, BOURNE, BASH, KSH,JAVA) are excelllent products solely geared toward the kind of patterns you're attempting to parse and are totally disjoint to database technologies.

Not only that SQL Server is a database tool with limited extensions into the world of file and file data streaming mechanisms, a poor extension of which is your toolkit.

If you can shed some light on its adopted usage within SQL Server as an addition or extension to the embedded toolkits shipped with SQL Server then please share them with me, otherwise time is better spent letting the right tool carry out the correct operation on data, or extending the DOS capability (which has always been poor).

A totally disappointing argument and article that can simply be replaced by one-shot pattern matching utility scripts using simpler notation, more easily readable and more readily available, shareable, updateable, compatible, readable, understandable, reusable .... must I carry on like the article, the list of reasons is endless.

David Wootton